Snyder’s Redskins Beating the Cowboys On and Off the Football Field

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WASHINGTON (CBSDC) - The Redskins haven’t been the free agent champions they’ve grown a reputation of being as of late, and while salary cap penalties enforced by the NFL are partly to blame for their offseason inactivity, it’s hard to ignore that business has just been handled differently in Washington since Bruce Allen and Mike Shanahan came to town.

“I think maybe the most interesting thing I found when I was researching the Redskins, and I talked to people inside the organization and outside of it, maybe the most interesting thing is kind of the role of Dan Snyder,” Albert Breer of the NFL Network told Lavar and Dukes on Wednesday.

The Redskins franchise has experienced more and more success since Snyder relinquished control to Shanahan and Allen, who in three years have transformed the roster from one of the oldest in the league, to one of the youngest, with no apparent ceiling for how high the team can climb.

By allowing experienced personnel to run football operations, Snyder has finally taken that long-awaited step forward as an owner, by stepping back from an offseason ritual that included overpaying free agent veterans well past their prime, and always being in pursuit of the next hot name in coaching.

“They’ve got a very, very experienced and trustworthy couple of people in charge,” Breer said of the Shanahan, Allen tandem which accounts for 44 years of NFL experience.

“It may have taken a little bit longer, but he’s gone through that natural maturation process that a lot of NFL owners go through,” Breer said. “Where first they’re trying to figure things out, and then they become a little bit overbearing for awhile, and like to be really in the football process, and then finally they find a coach or executive they’re really comfortable with and trust that person to run the show.”

Strangely enough, while Snyder is gradually embraced by the fans in Washington as the Redskins appear to be headed for a renaissance, the Cowboys continue to regress towards the mean. As a result, meddlesome owner Jerry Jones seems to be losing the respect of a fanbase growing increasingly hostile each year further removed from the team’s last championship.

It’s been a long time since January 1996 – seventeen and half years to be exact.

“I don’t see him ever handing full control over to somebody else,” Breer said of Jones, the self-appointed general manager/owner of the Cowboys.

“I think part of the issue with Jerry Jones is that he had success right away,” Breer explained. “His first step into the league wasn’t a wake-up call and ‘Hey, you need to really learn the ropes here’ and ‘This is different than how you run your other businesses.’ First thing Jerry Jones did was fire Tom Landry, hire Jimmy Johnson, and three years later, they’re winning Super Bowls.”

If there’s one thing Redskins fans have learned over the years, winning at the highest level can be a blessing and a curse, depending on how far removed you are from it.

While Dallas has enjoyed one more win than Washington over the past three seasons, honestly, whose future would you rather have at this point: the Cowboys or the Redskins?